Friends help out!

“Dude, are you kidding?” Dalton said. “I guarantee you I would be her highest-paid subscriber.”

“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “First off, your mom is hot. And secondly...” He stopped to think, but never came up with a second reason. “That’s it. That’s the only thing she needs. Hot girls have it easy. All she needs to do is show a little bit of skin,I’m not talking full rack, but a hint of cleavage,and you’re bringing in at least two thousand doubloons a month.”

“I wish you could hear yourself talk sometimes so you could hear how much of a virgin you sound like.”

“What do you think, Richie?” Dalton asked.

“I think she should do whatever she wants to do, and I’m mostly concerned that our friend Nora isn’t going to be going to college with us this semester.”

“Oh, put a sock in it, Richie,” Michael said, waving his wrench at him.

This group of geniuses,and I mean that both legitimately and sarcastically,were my three best friends and the three members of our robotics team who were confirmed boob-lookers.

Despite being the creepiest of the bunch, it was Michael who finally said, “But seriously, Nora, I don’t wanna make this weird, but my family has some money. If you really need some help, I could talk to them, and I’m sure they’d be willing to help you out with your first year so you don’t have to take out any insane loans from the bank or anything. Eventually, you can pay them back on your own time.”

That was the kind of stuff that made them worth hanging around with anyway. “I appreciate that, guys, but honestly, I’d rather just focus on fixing this guy for the competition next month.”

We had worked on a number of devices for a variety of competitions, but this month’s challenge was particularly difficult. The mysterious engineering school that refused to name itself was looking for a device that would make it easier for people to train dogs. The idea was essentially to create a range of lights that could somehow affect the brain of a canine enough that it would start to associate certain lights with a reward, thereby encouraging certain behaviors. This would allow an ordinary person to go beyond the range of standard training in much less time.

For example, instead of just teaching good old Buster to sit and stay, the lights could easily condition a dog to open a drawer or wake its owner up for breakfast in the morning when it sees the clock reach a certain time. Things that sound absolutely insane, but that was the beauty of robotics club,you never knew what would come next.

“I still think this assignment is fucking stupid,” Dalton exclaimed while moving some lights around on his device. “I mean, what kind of situation would someone be in where they could have their dog stare at these lights for multiple hours on end to actually affect behavior?”

“It’s gotta be somewhere with a lot of time,” Nora said, running the calibrations. Based on what they could study, they were getting closer and closer, but were still miles away from creating any device worth a damn beyond being nice to look at.

“I might stay a little bit later today,” Richie said. “I feel like I’m on the brink of something really cool, win or lose this robotics competition.”

“Well, you have fun with that, Richie,” I said, putting my stuff down, grabbing my keys, and heading toward the door. “I’ll keep you guys updated if anything changes. And if my mom creates that Twitch channel, I’ll share the link so you guys can show her support,but no calling her a MILF.”

“Fine,” Richie agreed. “But if you’re gonna take all the fun out of it, then why even subscribe in the first place?” He laughed as he said it, and I shook my head at those mischievous boys.

* * *

From then on, I honestly forgot about my mom’s crazy idea until three days later, when I heard a groan from her room. I entered slowly, the door standing slightly ajar, and immediately froze.

Sitting at her polished oak desk was my mom, illuminated by the harsh, unflattering glow of a monitor screen. My jaw practically hit the hardwood floor.

There she was, wearing a high-necked, cream-colored cable-knit sweater that modestly covered every inch of her skin. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back into a tidy, practical low bun, and her makeup was almost nonexistent save for a touch of light lip balm. She looked like she was about to attend a PTA meeting or chair a neighborhood bake sale. My poor mom , I thought. It made me feel like when you see an old person all dressed up to go to the movie theater.

Still, her natural beauty was still undeniable. Her high cheekbones and striking blue eyes popped on the webcam feed, even with her bad quality.

On her screen was the chaotic, hyper-kinetic world of Forthright, a brutally fast-paced battle royale game that even my seasoned gaming friends weren’t playing.

My mom’s character was currently staring at a brick wall in a digital alleyway, spinning in confused, jerky circles while she alternated between dull stares at the screen and blankly gazing at her controller.

“Sweetheart?” she gasped, looking up as I stepped further into the room. “Oh, thank goodness. I don’t know what I’m doing. I keep hitting ‘A’ to walk, but I can’t seem to get past this wall.”

I burst out laughing, stepping around her desk to peer over her shoulder at the stream setup. “Mom, ‘A’ is jump. You use the left thumbstick to move. How long have you been live?” I moved her little Banana character out of the way and it started hopping into an open field.

“About twenty minutes,” she sighed, adjusting her sweater collar. “I read a quick tutorial online, downloaded the software, and figured I’d test it out. But I don’t think this is going to work. Look at the chat. It’s a ghost town. I don’t know why you’re mom even tried.”

I leaned over to look at her dashboard. In the bottom corner, the viewer count proudly displayed a single digit: 1.

I glanced at the chat log on the side, but it was completely blank. Not a single message, greeting, or troll. Just one solitary, silent spectator sitting in the dark somewhere, watching my mother’s digital avatar. It was probably a bot.

“Hey, one viewer is better than zero!” I encouraged, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “And honestly, you look gorgeous on camera, Mom. Even with this terrible lighting.”

“Oh, stop it,” she blushed, waving a dismissive hand, though a small smile broke through her frustration. “I look like a floating head in a cave. And this single viewer is probably just a bot.” Damn, so she knew more than I thought.

“Maybe, but it’s a start. You actually did it, Mom. I’m proud of you.” I hugged her tight and rested my head on her shoulder.

She smiled up at me, the tension in her shoulders finally easing a bit. “Thanks, honey. But I think that’s enough of me running into walls for one night.” She clicked a few buttons, ending the broadcast, and the monitor flickered back to her desktop. “I’ll try again tomorrow after I read the manual. Or whatever games have instead of manuals.” at the last minute, right before the broadcast are off, I could’ve sworn I saw a single comment, “mother/daughter hot :)” I was glad my mom hadn’t seen it:

The next morning, I tossed my heavy binder into my locker and turned around to find Dalton, Michael, and Richie leaning against the surrounding lockers.

“Ayy miss daughter of streamer,” Michael greeted, holding an iced coffee in one hand and a half-eaten breakfast burrito in the other. “Did your mom start yet or what cause I have ten bucks with her name on it fr.”

I rolled my eyes, slapping his hand away as he offered me a bite of his lukewarm burrito. “First of all, gross. Second of all, she actually did go live last night for like twenty minutes.”

Dalton yelped in surprise like a puppy. “Shut up! Really?”

“She did,” I said, leaning back against my locker door. “She spent fifteen minutes against a wall because she didn’t know how the controller worked. It was frankly a bit bad to watch, but I was proud of her.”

“A true pioneer,” Richie chimed in with a smirk, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Silently grinding in the trenches. Respect.”

“Yeah, yeah, make your jokes,” I said, swinging my backpack over my shoulder as we started walking down the crowded corridor toward the shop class wing. “How’s the dog conditioning light project coming along? Did you guys actually make any progress yesterday after I left?”

“ Hey,” Michael, said, “ we can occasionally do stuff without you there.” But the three of them still went quiet, exchanging guilty, sideways glances.

“Okay, look,” Dalton began, raising his hands defensively. “In our defense, the wiring logic on that light grid is completely unhinged.”

“Translation: you guys didn’t figure it out,” I teased.

“We couldn’t,” Michael admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. “We spent three hours trying to sequence the frequency spectrum to trigger the neural response parameters from the research paper. We ended up short-circuiting the main board twice and blowing a fuse in the shop closet. Mr. Henderson almost kicked us out.”

“It’s a nightmare,” Richie added, shaking his head.

“The theoretical math checks out, but getting the actual hardware to pulse the precise lux output without overheating the LED array is like trying to thread a needle while riding a unicycle. We’re totally stuck, Nora. We need your brain on the calibration code, or we’re going to lose the regional spot to those pretentious rich kids from Saint Jude’s.”

I shook my head, though I couldn’t help but feel a little flattered. “Fine. I’ll rework the frequency algorithms during lunch period. But if you blow another fuse, Michael, you’re buying my lunch for a week.”

“Deal, it’s a date,” Michael immediately agreed, but when he saw my death stare, he quickly back pedaled. “Kidding, not a date. Now, come on, we have something to show you in the lab.”

Port Michael, I knew he had liked me for a long time so I felt bad but I never wanted to lead any of them on. I just wasn’t interested in dating in high school.

We turned into the robotics lab, a cavernous room filled with workbenches, soldering irons, scattered circuit boards, and the sharp scent of ozone and motor oil. Richie walked over to the back corner table, where a large, brown cardboard box sat wrapped in bubble wrap and duct tape.

“What’s this?” I asked, walking over and pointing at the bulky package.

“Little something,” Dalton said, stepping up beside me with an unusually genuine smile on his face. “This isn’t for the robotics team, Nora. It’s for your mom.”

I blinked, looking from the box back to the three of them. “What do you mean?”

Michael stepped forward, tapping the top of the box. “Look, we know things are a little tight right now with her job situation, So, we all pitched in.”

Richie reached over and peeled back the tape, pulling open the cardboard flaps to reveal a sleek, dual ring-light kit, complete with adjustable aluminum stands, softboxes, and a high-end USB capture card. It was easily worth a couple hundred dollars, the exact kind of gear serious content creators used “We got her a streamer lighting setup,” Richie explained softly. “The softboxes will eliminate those harsh overhead shadows, and the color temperature knobs let you dial in that perfect, natural glow.

I stood there, staring down at the pristine equipment nestled in the foam packaging, completely speechless for a second. The guys who made endless boob jokes and acted like complete idiots ninety percent of the time had pooled their money together to buy my mother a gift to help her get back on her feet.

“Guys...” I murmured, my voice softening as a warm feeling swelled in my chest. “This is... you really didn’t have to do this.”

“Hey, don’t make it weird,” Michael said quickly, waving a hand in the air to brush off the emotion, though his cheeks flushed a slight pink. “It’s an investment. Till your mom becomes a famous streamer, she can take us out to Chili’s or something.”

I let out a soft laugh, wiping a sudden moisture from the corner of my eye before any of them could point it out. I looked at the three of them,my chaotic, ridiculous, brilliant best friends

“Thank you,” I said genuinely, looking each of them in the eye. “Seriously. You have no idea what this will mean to her.”

“Ah, don’t mention it,” Richie said,

I set my bag down and pulling a chair up to the workbench, I really had the best friends.